A Shocking Accident

The story: Jerome is just nine when he is told about his father’s shocking accident. Everybody else, however, seems to find it rather funny…

A Shocking Accident 5 by Graham Greene

Jerome was called into his housemaster’s room in the break between the second and the third class on a Thursday morning. He had no fear of trouble, for he was a warden—the name given to approved, reliable boys in the lower grades. The 10housemaster, Mr. Wordsworth, sat behind his desk with a very unusual look on his face. Jerome had the impression when he entered that Mr. Wordsworth was afraid of him. “Sit down, Jerome,” Mr. Wordsworth said. “All going well with the trigonometry?” 15 “Yes, sir.” “Your father has had an accident.” “Oh.” Mr. Wordsworth looked at him with some surprise. “A serious accident.” “Yes, sir.” 20 Jerome worshipped his father: the verb is exact. As man makes an image of God, so Jerome had made an image of his father—from a very average man into a mysterious adventurer who traveled to distant places—Africa, the Middle East, even the Canary Islands. About his eighth birthday Jerome came to believe that his father either “ran guns” or was a member of the British Secret Service. Now it occurred to him 25that his father might have been wounded in “a hail of machine-gun bullets”. Mr. Wordsworth played with the pencils on his desk. He seemed at a loss for words. He said, “You know your father was in Naples in Italy?” “Yes, sir.” “Your aunt heard from the hospital today.” 30 “Oh.” Mr. Wordsworth hesitated, then quickly said, “It was a street accident.” “Yes, sir?” It seemed quite likely to Jerome that they would call it a street accident. The police of course had fired first; his father would not kill someone except as a last resort. 35 “I’m afraid your father was very seriously hurt indeed.” “Oh.” “In fact, Jerome, he died yesterday.” “Did they shoot him through the heart?”

1 “I beg your pardon. What did you say, Jerome?” 40 “Did they shoot him through the heart?” “Nobody shot him, Jerome. A pig fell on him.” A strange look came over Mr. Wordsworth’s face; it looked like he might laugh. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said quickly, “Your father was walking along a street in Naples when a pig fell on him. A shocking accident. In the poorer parts of Naples they keep pigs on their 45balconies. This one was on the fifth floor. It had become very fat. The balcony broke and the pig fell on your father.” Mr. Wordsworth stood up and went to the window, turning his back on Jerome. He shook a little with emotion. Jerome said, “What happened to the pig?” 50 Jerome was really not uncaring, as Mr. Wordsworth interpreted it to his colleagues. Jerome was only trying to understand the strange scene. Nor was Jerome a boy who cried; he was a boy who thought quietly, and he didn’t realize that his father’s death could be comic. It was later, in his first term at his public school, that he 55told the story to his best friend, who laughed. Naturally, after that he was called “Pig.” Unfortunately, Jerome’s aunt had no sense of humor. On her piano there was a large snapshot of his father, a large sad man in an old black suit on a beach in southern Italy. At the age of sixteen Jerome was well aware that the portrait looked more like the author a cheap novel than an agent of the Secret Service. All the same 60he loved the story of his father: he still had an album filled with picture-postcards (the stamps had been soaked off long ago for his other collection), and Jerome was always embarrassed when his aunt started to tell the story of his father’s death. “A shocking accident,” she would begin, and the stranger would make a face to show “interest,” although the story was really of no interest whatsoever. She would 65begin, “Italy seems like a beautiful, civilized country, but who could imagine a pig falling on someone? That was the moment when the interest became real. In response to his aunt’s long, rambling accounts, Jerome developed two ways to tell the story. Either he would talk so long that people became very bored, or he would make the story so brief that no one really noticed. 70 In course of time, neither too early nor too late, Jerome had become engaged to be married, to a pleasant fresh-faced girl of twenty-five whose father was a doctor in Pinner. Her name was Sally, her favorite author was Hugh Walpole, and she had adored babies ever since she had been given a doll at the age of five which moved its 75eyes and made water. Their relationship was contented rather than exciting, as became the love-affair of an accountant; Jerome could never allow anything, even a

2 love affair, to interfere with his work. One thought worried Jerome, however. Now that he might himself become a father, his love for his dead father increased; he realized how much love and affection 80had gone into the picture-postcards. He wanted to protect his memory, and he was worried whether this quiet love for his father would survive if Sally laughed at the story of his father’s death. She would certainly hear it when they had dinner with his aunt. Several times he tried to tell her the story, as she was naturally anxious to know all that concerned him. 85 What will happen next?

90 Vocabulary trigonometry: a branch of mathematics ran guns: brought guns into a country unlawfully a hail: a large number as a last resort: after all other alternatives had failed 95Hugh Walpole: novelist (1884-1941), a popular writer of romantic stories, often about upper-middle life Torquay: a seaside town in Devon, southwestern England appeased: made calm